


love is knowin' that you didn’t do it by your lonesome

by agetwellcard



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, M/M, Missing Scene, Nightmares, Pining, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spoilers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 00:39:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14726678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agetwellcard/pseuds/agetwellcard
Summary: Bucky looks into the horizon and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. Steve tries not to stare so openly, but he can’t help to. His eyelashes, the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips, all the same details that have been haunting his dreams since he woke up from the ice. He’s drawn them over and over, hands stained with charcoal that inevitably find their way onto everything he owns.He feels unwilling to talk, to try to find words that can somehow make the moment worthy, but it also feels vaguely like a waste for the precious minutes to slip by in silence.





	love is knowin' that you didn’t do it by your lonesome

**Author's Note:**

> title shamelessly taken from "junky" by brockhampton. 
> 
> anyways, sorry for this.

Steve thinks this might be easier.

Maybe he was never meant to linger. His suite in the Avenger’s tower, the impersonal apartment in Brooklyn, even the hotel rooms they’ve spent more than a few days in, they all seem to fill with loneliness the longer he stays, the feeling swallowing the rooms whole until the only option is to leave.

Sam and Natasha seem to always find something about each city and each hotel room to mourn when the time comes to leave. Sam will mourn the bakery down the street that wafts the smell of fresh bread when they walk past, and Natasha will mourn their neighbors that they run into a few times that understand her Russian curse words, and Steve will have his bags packed already because he never bother unpacking in the first place.

When he left for the USO tour, he had never been more scared to leave Brooklyn. He had never known a world that wasn’t stained so deeply with his past, each smell and each corner full of the ghosts of his memories. He still vividly remembers locking his apartment up before leaving for the tour, wondering – no, _knowing_ that he’d never see it again. That the careful way he crept across the floorboards to avoid the particularly creaky parts after years of practice, and the worn plates and glasses he had put away so diligently, and the drawer of Bucky’s clothes folded and refolded, were just things of the past. He left knowing that the he’d never live that life again.

Sometimes Steve hates to be right.

***

They think he’s a buzzkill. They say as much, too, whining when Steve won’t come out for a cup of coffee or watch a movie or dance to some pop song in another language with them. One day, Sam will try to drag Steve to the grocery, and the next, Natasha is begging him to accompany her to the movie theater. It’s nice, and Steve should be grateful, but he unfairly feels a little like he’s been ripped out of the picture, the two of them in some other frame without him.

They think he’s obsessed with the flip phone – or “shitty, drug-dealer burner phone” as Sam calls it – and always share worried expressions when they catch Steve frantically looking for a place to plug it in when the battery drops below halfway. The bottom of his suitcase is littered with wall adapters and back up cords and batteries. There are only two numbers in the phone, both of which that never call.

And maybe he is a little obsessed, but it’s not with the phone, and more to do with the people on the other end.

He doesn’t understand how Natasha and Sam can have their entire lives ripped out from underneath them and live like it never happened. And, sure, it’s happened enough to Steve, but he’s never been good with coping with it. He wonders how Sam wakes up every morning and grabs a coffee and jokes with Natasha and tries to read the local papers even if he only knows three words in the language.

He tries to broach the subject one morning with them. They’re sitting on the bed together, Natasha stealing sips of Sam’s coffee as Sam tries to pronounce German words. Steve belatedly realizes that Natasha is also wearing one of Sam’s sweaters. He doesn’t want to think about the implications of it right now.

“How do you forget?” he asks from the desk across from the bed.

Sam looks up from the paper with a startled expression on his face, and Natasha only raises a curious eyebrow.

“Forget what?” Sam asks.

Steve struggles to find the right words. He holds up his hands and then lays them back down on his lap. “You guys act like nothing has happened. Like we’ll be back in New York in a few days. Like this is a vacation.”

“Maybe it is,” Natasha hums.

“Steve, I didn’t forget anything,” Sam says. “I’m just trying to make the best of our situation.”

 _Our situation_.

When Sam looks like he’s about to say more, Steve shakes his head. “Sorry. You’re right. Forget I asked.”

So, Steve does what he always does when his life is torn out from under him. He wakes up early, shakes the nightmares, and smiles when it feels like he should.

***

The first time that Steve visits Wakanda to see Bucky after cryo, he spends the entire jet ride pacing. Admittedly, he’s visited before. He had sat on the other side of the glass for a few minutes, having thought maybe he would absurdly try to talk to him, only to realize that there was no sense in it. Instead, he had dinner with T’Challa and finds a friend in his ally.

It had been Bucky, though, who had gotten in touch with Steve to let him know he could come visit. He tried not to linger on the offer, or the mystery of how long Bucky’s been out of cryo, and instead sends back a cheerful text when he can.

Natasha had picked out a shirt that she thought Steve looked good in, and even Sam had said he looked sharp as he nervously ran his fingers through his hair before he left. The suit was still packed away into an old duffle, though, thrown over his shoulder and kept close for emergencies. It felt somehow wrong to leave it behind.

T’Challa greets him when he arrives, but excuses himself quick, assuring Steve that his younger sister Shuri could show him around. Steve had met her before, but only briefly, and had heard much more about her. He hoped that she couldn’t just tell that he had barely even finished high school, and most of the work he turned in was copied from Bucky.

She doesn’t say much, though, and instead only takes to sending Steve wayward glances every now and then. He wonders what she’s looking for, or if it’s just his myth she’s trying to understand.

“You knew him before?” she asks finally, the two of them walking down a long dirt path.

Steve nods.

“Was he a little shit then too?”

Steve barks out a surprised laugh. “Yeah, he kind of was.”

When they find him, he’s curled up against a tree trunk with a book in his lap. The image of him feels like something he’ll never forget as he watches for a few seconds before Shuri disturbs him. Steve doesn’t think he’s seen Bucky so peaceful since he was a teenager on Steve’s bed, folded in on himself as he read a pulp novel before reciting lines to Steve that he thought were particularly good.

His hair is long like before, but instead of lying in greasy locks on his shoulders, part of it is wrapped up into a ball on the back of his head, a few stray strands swaying in the slight breeze. His mouth is slightly parted and his eyebrows are strung together.

Steve wishes he could’ve lived a life where he was always this peaceful, and that he had never known so many evils.

Shuri says something to him in Xhosa, and Bucky doesn’t look up from the book when he says something back. Steve doesn’t understand it, but he can practically hear the smartass tone he takes up, and something about it makes Steve want to smile but he doesn’t manage.

Shuri is about to respond when Steve can’t help the soft, “Buck,” that falls from his mouth.

He looks up, eyes wide for a few seconds before evening out. He smiles at him, all teeth and rawness. “Hey,” he says back.

Shuri says something again in Xhosa, and Bucky makes a face and shoos her away.

Bucky doesn’t say when he got out of cryo, but Bucky tells him about his life in Wakanda while the two of them walk around. He talks about doing farm work and learning (or at least trying to learn) Xhosa with Shuri. He blushes when a group of children run up to him with shouts of, “White Wolf!” and he stoops to talk to them in a quiet voice as they excitedly touch his hair and tug on his clothes.

Although their course seems arbitrary, Bucky leads them to a body of water that stretches into the horizon, the sun just starting to set. Bucky sits down in the grass beside a tree and his eyes float up to meet Steve, a questioning look in them. Steve is quick to sit down beside him, keeping a safe distance between their bodies.

It’s easy to talk about the present with Bucky. It’s even easier to simplify the hard truths of either of their current situations, and to ignore what happened to get them there. Steve wonders if maybe it’s for the best, and maybe this is how everyone gets by.

Steve doesn’t even know how to broach the past. He doesn’t know how to ask if Bucky remembers the window in their old apartment that would never shut tight, or if he remembers the feeling of Steve’s hands running down his chest the night before he went to basic. He doesn’t know if he _should_ ask.

Bucky looks into the horizon and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. Steve tries not to stare so openly, but he can’t help to. His eyelashes, the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips, all the same details that have been haunting his dreams since he woke up from the ice. He’s drawn them over and over, hands stained with charcoal that inevitably find their way onto everything he owns.

He feels unwilling to talk, to try to find words that can somehow make the moment worthy, but it also feels vaguely like a waste for the precious minutes to slip by in silence.

Steve remembers when they use to have a lifetime they could share together. They spent endless nights reading silently on the couch together, or listening to music on the gramophone, or just drinking sodas on the fire escape. They planned futures in white picket fence houses right next door to each other. They had hours, days, weeks, months, years, all to themselves.

Now, every minute feels like an alarm about to go off. He’s only known Bucky for short minutes, hours, and days since he fell from that train. He knows he should be grateful for anything they do have, since after he couldn’t reach Bucky’s hand, it’s more than he ever thought he would have. And, yet, he can’t help but to childishly wish back all those years they thought they had together. Maybe he doesn’t want to get married and have a family anymore, or buy a house right next to Bucky’s, but he wouldn’t mind having him around a little longer.

The truth of the matter is that Steve isn’t sure how long he has left with Bucky before something tears them apart again, so he clears his throat and tries to say what he’s been ignoring for years.

***

Steve knows Natasha and Sam aren’t trying to hide their relationship, but they don’t ever tell Steve about it, either. He thinks he knows why, truthfully, but he could be wrong.

Selfishly, it’s hard sometimes for him. He’s friends with both of them, and is well accustomed to being the odd one out after years of hanging around Bucky and whichever girl he had taken to that week. He’s fine with being alone, really.

He just hasn’t been feeling normal lately, though, and sometimes the constant knowing looks and lingering touches are fucking with Steve’s head. He vaguely wishes they’d just be completely open about it, like Vision and Wanda. Although, having to watch the two of them lean in for a kiss every other word of the conversation wasn’t exactly how Steve wanted to spend a few days catching up.

Steve wonders what it would be like to run away with someone. He’ll drift before bed thinking about waking up next someone, and giving a quick goodbye kiss before leaving to grab breakfast for the two of them, and walking down dark cobbled streets holding hands.

The closest Steve ever got to running away with someone was during the war. It hadn’t been running away as much as it had been surviving, which Steve figures it true now as well.

***

They stay in France the longest. Steve thinks it’s because Sam and Natasha seem to notice that Steve talks the most there. He doesn’t even realize he can until he hears a string of French, words light and airy and strung together so carefully. A couple is talking about where they’re going to have dinner, and a group of friends are arguing about a movie, and a man jokes with someone on the phone, and –

Dernier had taught him. It had started with curse words, hissed with an unpracticed tongue that had made Dernier half-insulted, half-amused. He only taught Steve more because he thought it was funny that the American symbol was learning French. He’d talk in long, flowing sentences that seemed to jumble together in his head until eventually Steve would finally understand them, the two of them talking in code around everyone but Gabe. Bucky picked it up, too, though, but rarely ever gave on to how much he knew.

When he first hears the language again, though, a part of his heart seems to whither at the memory of another person from his past who is dead. For a short moment, he wants to fall apart there on the street with the pain of knowing so many people that have died before him. He doesn’t understand how he’s the only one left standing, against all of his best efforts.

He comes around, though, finally getting a few choked words out at the hotel reception desk, Sam and Natasha sharing impressed looks. Natasha must understand a little because she smirks knowingly when the woman working reception makes a joke when inquiring about the bed situation, but Steve assures her that they need three separate rooms and then slides a nondescript credit card with someone else’s name on it across the desk.

It’s in France that Steve tries to write Bucky letters. He used to send him letters detailing every boring detail of his life back in Brooklyn while Bucky was in Europe. He never had issues filling whole sheets, and never second guessed a single word, finishing every note with a whole-hearted, “I love you and I miss you, Steve” like there was never any other way to sign them.

The wastebaskets of his hotel rooms are full of half-started letters. The logos of the hotels at the top, and Bucky’s name written right below, somehow mimicking the letters Steve would write from the USO tour. He tries rambling, like before, but it feels so stupid to waste their words on the flavor of the espresso Steve had this morning, or the overpriced jacket he bought that Natasha said looked good on him.

He watches the sun rise from the hotel window as he writes a few sentences, stares into the early morning sky for an undetermined amount of minutes, and then scraps his paper and starts again. The process wrings Steve dry of words, and he feels like he has the mental equivalent of a sore throat by the time that he collapses on his bed, still in his jeans and jacket, but shoes mercifully kicked off at the door.

He falls asleep with one letter not crumpled, and only because Steve is too tired to tear apart the truths right now. He figures he’ll do it in the morning before they leave to another city, and to another hotel, and to another temporary feeling.

_Bucky,_

_Here’s some French for you:_

_Tu me manques._

_Why are you always missing from me?_

_I’ve missed you since you left to war. And I’ve missed you since you fell from that train. And I’ve missed you since I first saw you on that highway. And I’ve missed you since Wakanda._

_I feel like you’ve been missing from me for so long. It’s easy to forget that you’re back now._

_Maybe one day I can stop missing you._

_Until then,_

_Steve_

***

During the war, Bucky had kissed Steve in a dirty hotel in London, and said it was because he wasn’t sure he’d ever get the chance again.

His hair had been wet from the shower and face flushed from the hot water. He tasted like beer but he wasn’t drunk. His touch had felt like what Steve always imagined it would be feel like to return to Brooklyn after the war.

 They never kissed again, never talked about it, and they never made it back after the war.

***

Before the world was ending, and before these string of hotel rooms, Bucky had smiled weakly at Steve and said, “I used to think that it was them that did this to me, but I think the violence was always there. Always just a part of me.”

It hadn’t made sense at the time. Bucky could be cruel and uncompromising, and he knew his way around a rifle, but he always had a moral compass. His violence had been carefully aimed at evil until he fell off that train.

Steve had to swallow thickly so as not to stupidly admit that Bucky’s violence had always drawn Steve to him. When he had been small, Bucky had saved him, all sloppy fistfights in alleyways. Steve admired the practiced, yet improper way he’d throw a punch, and even better, the way he’d glare at any who dared to challenge him. He was something that Steve couldn’t be, formidable and frightening and strong.

Yet, Steve wishes he could somehow paint the picture of who Bucky was before the war and Hydra, but he only knows it will hurt. He could try to explain the soft part of Bucky, the ones that never felt violent, like when he would come out of the theater with red eyes but still smiling as he ranted about the movie, or when he first woke up, hair mused and eyes squinted as he got ready for work. There was no way to tell him about this without offending the person he has become, whether he wanted it or not.

Bucky broke the news to Steve in a cold white room. He had put his hand on Steve’s shoulder, like that was the only safe touch they knew anymore, and told him he was going back into cryo. He said it without an ounce of fear, and maybe that’s what scared Steve so much.

He knows then that he doesn’t really know the man in front of him anymore, not really. He’ll never be who he was before the war or before Hydra. Steve knows he’ll never be who was before the war or before the ice. They’ll both never be who they were, and that’s fine, and they’ll keep changing.

Steve feels like he’s lived many lives, and yet somehow Bucky has found him in each one. He thinks of Bucky’s eyes, and voice, and smirk like roots from past lives growing into his new ones, too far overgrown to ever untangle.

***

He dreams of Bucky disappearing into the wind, Steve’s name falling out of his mouth before he’s all gone. Steve wakes up in the dirt, covered in sweat with a wet face. He rubs his eyes and tells himself it was a dream. He thinks of the breathing exercises and the rational thinking and the –

It only hits him after a few minutes of panting that it was real. Bucky’s gone again, always managing to slip through Steve’s finger.

In the end, it’s just another nightmare.  


End file.
